


and they dined on cheese

by papertzarina



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: (i'm sorry), (kind of), Bizarre Teatime Rituals, Cheese In A Variety Of Forms, Cicero Origin Story, Dark Comedy, Gen, Inspired By A Mod, Possible Alice In Wonderland References (But They Were Accidental), Present Tense, References To The Events Of TES IV: Oblivion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 09:32:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16015157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papertzarina/pseuds/papertzarina
Summary: “Smile was first seen in the hands of Cicero after he returned from his final job before taking the position of Keeper. The task was to assassinate a jester. Cicero returned with the dagger in hand and with his sanity shattered. The only explanation he offered was that he made a new friend and they dined on cheese.." --Royal Armory mod(sic).Or, Cicero meets a nameless jester. Things go downhill very quickly. (Or uphill, depending on your point of view).





	and they dined on cheese

**Author's Note:**

> there's a bit at the ending i didn't feel fully confident in, so i deleted it off the fic proper and put it in the ending notes. you might like it, you might dislike it... well, you might like or dislike the fic proper too. that's your call and either way is valid. :)
> 
> unbeta'd but edited, because i'm a coward. (by the way, i don't have a stable beta. if someone wants to be my beta reader, hmu! my tumblr's at izraphaels.tumblr.com.)

Cicero slips into the palace under the shadows of the night. The walls are made of stone, and his footsteps are occasionally muffled by carpets. It’s remarkably easy to just enter and not be noticed, busy as the men and women seem to be with chatter about war and such. He doesn’t really care. He slips towards a specific, dusty door towards the right, already having figured it’ll take him to the jester in question, since according to his gathered knowledge, it’s from where he emerges every morning. He tries opening it; it’s locked. It rattles a bit on its hinges, but doesn't give. Cicero shrugs and looks around. A guard with a juicy keyring stalks about towards him. He could just kill him and take it… And then, the door creaks open. Small miracles of the Mother. Cicero pushes open the door just a little further and slips in, completely silent.   
  
There’s a dusty kitchen, and then a hallway, and there’s a path of footsteps in the dusty floor that Cicero follows up until a room. He peers into the keyhole, but he can’t see anything, so he lockpicks the door open and slips in. The room feels strange; it is, first things first, deeply imbedded in this… pitch-black darkness. It has a barely-used bed almost hiding in a corner, and the walls are made out of bare stone. Or so Cicero guesses, due to the aforementioned… darkness. It’s not the darkness he’s used to, and that’s the first thing that unnerves him about the job; he doesn’t feel safe in it, unlike with normal shadows. There are some cupboards around, closing in almost menacingly on the dusty bed. He can barely see a man sitting at a table, which has been placed for some reason in the middle of the room. He’s facing away from Cicero. Perfect. He closes in on his prey, and then--   
  
“Sweet tea or salty tea?”   
  
Cicero blinks and tries to sink back into the shadows. He’s absolutely, 100% unfazed. Then, the jester turns around, grabs him by the scruff of his tunic and lifts him up before dropping him closer to the table, letting Cicero fall to the floor, like a ragdoll.   
  
“I said,  _ sweet tea, _ or  _ salty tea? _ It’s rude to run away.” He turns around towards the cupboards and busies himself. Vague clinkage of fine porcelain is heard.   
  
Cicero pulls himself up, one hand on the table, and feels befuddled.  _ What in Oblivion is salty tea? _   
  
“Sweet tea has sweet cheese in it. Salty tea has regular cheese.” The man doesn’t even turn around.  _ How did he…? _ Cicero is fairly sure he hasn’t said anything. Quiet as a mouse, that’s been Cicero so far, years and years in the Brotherhood, and yet. The man lifts a metallic tray up and lets it drop on the table. He pauses to light a couple of candles.   
  
In the light, Cicero can see him much better. The first thing he notices is that the man is older than he'd imagined. The assassin would guess he only passed the sixty year mark a few years ago. The fool’s fairly well-preserved, physically, from the way he moves. Not a match for Cicero, but his back is straight and he doesn't walk with any sort of limp or slowness. His hair is white, or maybe very light gray, and his eyes are milky, as if he's blind. The man grabs a wedge of cheese and a knife from the table and starts dicing, dropping the pieces of cheese on a small platter; he pours a cup of hot liquid from a teapot and raises an eyebrow towards Cicero.   
  
"Care to join us?"   
  
_ Join who? _ It's just him and the jester in here. He reluctantly walks around the table, into the comforting shadows, and sits in front of the man. There's several objects in front of him, including a plate with a pastry Cicero doesn't recognize and a candle sitting smugly close to him. It's still unlit, but not for long, as the jester lights it with another candle.

  
"Oh, don't be rude, Cicero," the old jester tells him. He pops three pieces of cheese into his tea, and then offers the assassin a cupful of tea and a platter filled with cheese dicings. Half of them are pink. The jester sees him hesitate and leaves the platter near him. Cicero  frowns and picks up a piece of pink cheese, dropping it cautiously on his tea. It dissolves, somehow, and when he takes a sip, the tea tastes better than any he's ever had.  _...Huh _ . The jester, meanwhile, seems to be chattering towards another dark corner of the table as if there was a person there. Ah, that's the why of the murder, then -- the old man's gone insane and his jokes are no longer funny. Fairly understandable. There’s a wheel of, again, cheese, on a plate on the table. Like a cake. The fool serves himself a slice of cheese-wheel and keeps talking.   
  
"...and the Empire just  _ hasn't  _ been the same since you, obviously! Not nearly as fun!" the jester finishes, grinning widely. There's something about him that makes Cicero want to cringe, something that nauseates him. He needs...  _ some ginger _ , he thinks vaguely, remembering something a fellow assassin told him a long time ago, about voyaging in the sea. "Oh," the jester says, turning around to face him without changing his grin, "why didn't you say so?" He gets up with a hop and walks over to some cabinets, carrying a candle with him. It's the candle he's been using to light the rest.  The flame shudders and dances and spills but never goes out, and Cicero's a little freaked out by the fact that he doesn't know where it came from. The jester, the one Cicero's slowly been realizing has been completely nameless to him the whole time, turns around to face him, having produced from somewhere a handful of ginger zest. He coats the pastry sitting criminally close to Cicero with it. The assassin, after a moment’s doubt, picks it up and eats it; as he bites in, he feels a sense of levity about him, as if his own body lost weight. He straightens his back and rolls his shoulders as he eats the pastry. The cheesy filling fills his mouth.   
  
Cicero finishes the pastry and licks his fingers, surprising himself. He's never been much of a glutton, but the pastry's just... oddly tasty! If he allows himself a moment of fancy, it had been almost beckoning him to eat it.  _ Eat me, eat me. _ The old man's eyes glimmer, and Cicero fully sinks back into his old almost-nauseous discomfort.   
  
"Oh, do you like them? They didn't even do them back when I was alive, and that was a very long time ago -- they're from  _ far  _ before!" He's delighted. Cicero is most definitely not. What does he mean, back when he was alive? ...He might be a vampire. Cicero drinks some tea, to calm himself, and finds it just makes him feel more nervous. His heart's beating fast, faster maybe than it's ever had. He frowns and looks at the cup. What  _ is  _ in that tea? What in Oblivion was in the pastry? He really doesn't know, and he doesn't know if he wants to know or not, either. It's a strange situation he's in, isn’t it, tea in the dark with a madman.   
  
"In the dark?  _ In the dark?! _ " the jester bellows suddenly, slamming his hands on the table and rattling all the silverware. Cicero jolts in surprise. He's  _ just  _ finished that thought! He feels repetitive, thinking  _ what in Oblivion...? _ every thirty seconds, but he's honestly a little rattled. Well, a lot rattled. Yes, definitely, that is how he's feeling. Rattled. The jester stares at Cicero’s widened eyes under his cowl and starts laughing. "Oh, Cicero, you could've told me! You can't even  _ see! _ " He laughs. "You haven't started  _ seeing _ it yet!" He keeps laughing. " _ You haven't even begun! _ "    
  
The old man stops for a second. "Ah, well, a jumpstart can't hurt, can it?", he says, and he chuckles. And he blows on his candle, and every candle turns off --   
  
And then the sky bursts out of the ceiling.   
  
It's a pink and blue sky, alien and bright, and there's a rug under Cicero's feet, and he might be sitting on a different chair, or perhaps a giant cheese wedge; who knows! And there’s something deeply wrong here, and something inside Cicero is screaming, but the assassin finds it easier to catalogue the huge purple shrooms, large as trees, taking their place. He's holding a cheesy pastry, that's new, and he squeezes it in a daze and boom there goes the filling. Except it used to be a creamy yellowish colour and now it's red, and there's bits of something off-white and hard in it, but when Cicero licks the side of the pastry it still tastes like cheese! Delicious! And Cicero then giggles, smudges of red filling besides his lips, and he giggles and giggles and keeps giggling, keeps laughing. Laughing! Oh,  _ wonderful! _ The Mother would chastise him about eating messily, wouldn’t she, though? He digs with more care, now, into his pastry, licking the filling, and something inside him breaks. Or maybe bursts. Bursts is a much more positive adjective, as if it was spurting Cicero-flavored fillings. Or butterflies. So he likes breaking better. Because he's not a filling! As far as Cicero knows, souls are a light! So the breaking -- the glass of a window! It makes sense, it really does.    
  
Cicero lifts his eyes from his suddenly-delicious dinner to find the madman grinning at him, and he grins right back. The old man seems to have changed from his red jester’s clothes into an orange and purple ensemble! There's a ghost, yes, he was right about the light-shaped souls, and Cicero can't quite make out his face, but he seems male and feels Imperial. How fun! He giggles again, and some part of himself is screaming because he doesn't know himself. Which is good! It's always good to have a little mystique. It's the point of being an assassin! Cicero doesn't think  _ these  _ things, though. He just feels like they're being thought at him by someone else. Maybe the jester! Oh, he's looking forward to killing the man!    
  
He sees, on the table, a dagger. It looks nothing like the dagger he brought for the job in the first place, but in some dreamlike logic, he knows it is. It's shorter and sharper, and its handle is longer, and it has far more intricate designs etched on it now and the blade's skinnier and thinner, but he'd know that old dagger anywhere, nevermind he picked it up for the first place only a few hours ago. He grabs it, throws it in the air and catches it, and it does a cartwheel and lands on its side-edge and cuts his hand. Ow. He flips it, grabs the handle, and as soon as the pommel touches his blood Cicero's new dagger starts glimmering. He grins and looks straight at the jester. Cicero presses a hand flat against the table, pushes his chair back, and gets up. And he throws himself on the table to stab the old man's chair -- but he's gone! And so are the crumbs, and the sky, and the ghost, and everything but the dagger. And the jester’s clothes, somehow. Fun.   
  
And Cicero is, once again, in a dark room with a madman. He giggles and flips his new dagger, and as he keeps doing that, he gets up and leaves. And the guard with the key'll be found dead next morning, and Cicero will keep the dagger for the rest of his life. And this strange knowledge makes Cicero smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Back at the Shivering Isles, the Madgod sighs heavily and holds his face up with his hand. He shimmers a bit, and now he's a different, younger person, with the old Sheogorath's molten-gold eyes. The ghost solidifies in his chair a bit, unsure, staticky almost, and puts one hand on the Daedric Prince's shoulder.
> 
> "He’ll cause a lot less pain this way," the new Sheogorath tells him, "but I'm still not happy to have broken the mind of someone as dangerous as him. Nevermind the fact that he’s a fellow brother, and even if I’m not part of the Family anymore Sithis is still older than any of us Princes, and…”
> 
>  _You’re worried about another god?_ teases the almost-Emperor’s flickering golden ghost, as the Champion keeps talking.
> 
> “...but there were rules, and there will be rules, too, once you and him work out that Dragonborn problem you've been having, but still..."
> 
> The ghost disappears into thin air as Sheogorath keeps talking, until he finally falls into the silence that used to characterize him. The memory of the sound Cicero’s mind made as it shattered runs around the Prince’s mind, but it’s soon forgotten -- as madness calls again.


End file.
